Following Judah's Lion

Have We Risen?

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

Those words, spoken by the Lord’s angel, reverberated throughout history, past, present, and future. The Lamb had been bruised, the head had been wounded, the blood had been shed, the body had been buried, but now the tomb was empty. The Christ had risen. The angel gives a divine command to the two Marys.

And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.

It is not enough to believe the tomb is empty. We must see Jesus in all His risen glory. Of course we must proclaim His resurrection, but we must also behold the Risen Christ and enter into that same resurrection. “To know Him, and the power of His resurrection” is not some mystical muse and lofty philosophy. All power is found in Christ, and this is the power of the gospel itself. We, as believers in Him, must not have as our sole proof some literary creeds to which we cling but are contradicted by the lives we lead and the mundane devotional experiences we claim are conducted in the presence of that same Risen Christ. A vacuous spiritual journey belies any and all altitudinous proclamations of doctrinal truth.

I do not speak of unfettered and unbridled subjectivism that makes the Scriptures bow to the experience and places unwarranted authority on the one who shares his experience. But I am addressing the contingent of believers, numbering in the tens of millions, who claim His name and embrace His redemption and yet are no more remarkable in this darkness than any other cultural subset. We cannot at this present time see the Christ with the retinas of the flesh, but are we content to let our earthly eyes be our exclusive spiritual portals or do we have other “eyes” that can see deeper and farther than our optic nerves?

And this is a truism: One can share verbally that Christ has risen from the dead without ever experiencing the glory of His presence and the life changing redemption known only to those who have been changed by it, but no one can meet the Risen Christ and not be powerfully bound and motivated to share Him with others. And what does that say about most pew dwellers, members of an evangelical church, who go month after month without sharing His name and breathing his witness? It says they need a fresh awakening, a spiritual resuscitation, and a reinvigorated journey that breaks loose from the grave clothes of moralism, politics, ecclesiastical works, and the dominance of the things of Martha’s kitchen. It says we need a resurrection of THE resurrection that finds voice and depiction through the observable actions and demeanor of those He inhabits.

And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

Fear and great joy?? What a mixture! They were filled with emotions and who can blame them. Away with this emotionless Christianity that loves the stoic debate stage but shuns outbursts of passion and emotion. When was the last time you actually saw a preacher weep uncontrollably in the pulpit? In prayer? When was the last time you saw a preacher visibly shaken and filled with the fear of God? We preachers are great exegetes, but when it comes to a manifestation of that which we teach we are founding wanting. And when the Marys brought the word of His resurrection to the disciples, were they “matter of fact”?

Think about what we say we believe and what we say is true and what we say we have experienced. The whole world searches for the meaning of life and death. Great religions, false and fabricated, have sprung up and flourished simply because man is searching for life eternal. And in the midst of this we claim to have THE answer, and have not only met the Creator God personally, we claim He INHABITS US. And does such a claim warrant, and even demand, substantiation? Is it fair to those outside to require some proof that goes beyond doctrinal creeds and systematic theologies?

Imagine a man who smokes cigarettes but is an outspoken health advocate. When asked why he does not quit he replies that he does not need to smoke and he can quit anytime he desires. And when someone points out to him that smoking is at odds with his health advocacy, he still continues to smoke while teaching others the incongruity of smoking and good health. Obviously his words of wisdom lose their power and authenticity because his lifestyle speaks in terms louder than his words. If he does not believe his teachings enough to warrant adherence, then why would anyone else?

It is time for us to be consumed with Jesus in ways that far outdistance our neat little ecclesiastical models and significantly step out from the clutches of our fallen culture. We must, like Mary and Mary, share Jesus from a position of present experience and passion to a lost and dying world who are not even curious, much less impressed, with our present manifestations of the Risen Christ. But before any alterations can be sought, we must take a vulnerable inventory of how we live and how we think and even how we believe in the light of the words of the New Testament. We have become professional teachers at the expense of being Scripture in flesh.

And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

The gospel is much more than a message; it is life and life eternal. Stephen Hawking suggested recently that creation did not require a god. That is evidence of both the arrogance and ignorance of man, even a man who is considered “intelligent”. But we are believers in the Redeemer and we cannot shamefully rely on our tenants as our “proof texts” while allowing our lifestyle to lag way behind our teachings, publications, and, yes, blogs. It is time for an awakening.

Jesus is alive. He has risen from the dead. He is coming again. His gospel is the only hope for the world, and we are His only voice and His only flesh. Glorious extrication from this culture, not assimilation, is required. In short, we as believers in Jesus must allow the Potter to remake us in His image. I submit, that kind of transformation would be astonishing to the world, astounding to the church, and might possibly be a seismic event in the western culture itself that would be measured in souls.